Memory lane stirs up childhood remembrances

Renee Poole, Special to the Enquirer

A few weeks ago, I had to ride into town to run a few errands – the first of which was having my car battery tested and replaced at AutoZone – with a carload of kids. That was definitely an experience in and of itself.

After having all that fun, we had to go to Tractor Supply for chicken feed. Side note: No, I don’t own a farm, but we do have a few chickens for the eggs.

I’m sure most people from Hartselle and surrounding areas who are my age or older remember that what is now Tractor Supply used to be Walmart. So as I parked and unloaded the kids, I couldn’t help but think about how things were when I was a kid. In my mind, I took a trip down memory lane.

When I was a young child, my grandmother kept my brother and me quite a bit while my parents worked. Occasionally, she would take us to the old Hartselle Walmart.

Of course, the trip there was in an “old grandma car,” as I called it, and without worrying about buckling up in a seatbelt, much less a car seat. We sat still, though, for the most part. My brother and I would argue and fight, while my uncle, who is 6 six years older than I am, would try to take our minds off of whatever it was we were fighting about. He was really good at that.

When we would finally get to Walmart, we were in all-out play mode. Yes, we were the crazy kids you would see running around playing hide-and-seek in the clothes racks while our grandmother very calmly called us to not run off. I remember those games of playing clothes rack hide-and-seek vividly, and I cherish those memories.

I also remember that it seemed as though nothing fazed my grandmother. No matter how many toys we asked her to buy for us, or how loud we were as we ran down the aisles, she never seemed to get stressed out because of it. In fact, she always seemed to be laughing and smiling at our antics.

All these things flooded my mind as I walked with my children across the parking lot into Tractor Supply. It was a surreal moment for me. At that point, I hadn’t been in the store since it was Walmart all those years ago. I realize it’s only part of where Walmart used to be, but it was still a moment I’ll always remember.

Reliving the memories from all those years ago, while walking with my own children into that same building for something completely different, was amazing. I physically saw what was happening, which was me herding my kids into the store. But my mind’s eye saw what used to happen, simultaneously.

It reminded me how fast time flies and how we really need to stop and cherish the present instead of checking off items on our to-do lists.